Fandom Debuts Helix, a Contextual Targeting Solution, to Unlock Unlikely Audiences

Today, the fan platform Fandom, a user-populated library of gaming and entertainment content, unveiled its new contextual targeting solution, Helix.

The product uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to taxonomize Fandom’s 50 million pages of content, enabling the publisher to serve contextually relevant ads to users and unlock new, nonintuitive audiences for advertisers, according to Fandom chief revenue officer Jeremy Steinberg.

“What Helix will do is provide advertisers more real-time insights and connect them directly to activation strategies, which will inform creative, audience segments, and the ability to target audiences that they didn’t even think about before at scale,” Steinberg said.

Helix is an extension of Fandom’s FanDNA offering, which compiles and distills user behavioral data into actionable insights for advertisers. The publisher plans to release a steady drumbeat of additions to the Helix suite of products over the next year, including platform-specific solutions, packages surrounding specific eras, and automatic targeting against trends.

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The offering is the latest in a series of sophisticated contextual ad products to emerge in recent years, as concerns surrounding the durability of user-based targeting have compelled the industry to improve its contextual offerings. 

The media company Dotdash Meredith, for instance, has seen three consecutive quarters of double-digit digital advertising growth due in large part to the success of its contextual product D/Cipher.

Inside the Helix DNA

Fandom has a rich, proprietary pool of data, but until the launch of Helix, it has been limited in its ability to turn that information into advertising strategies for brands, according to Steinberg. 

Fandom operates as a wiki, and this unstructured format has made it challenging to effectively categorize its content. Historically, it has focused on moments-based targeting, cross-visitation targeting, and takeovers. 

With Helix, Fandom uses AI to analyze all the content on a given page—including text, video, art, and sentiment—and taxonomize its vast library.

This allows the publisher to understand pages by obvious connections, such as genre, character, and themes. More importantly, it also unlocks less obvious connections, such as the emotional motivators that compel fans to consume specific pieces of content.

For instance, the gaming company Bethesda and its agency Liquid Advertising worked as launch partners for Helix. On a campaign for the video game Elder Scrolls, Helix identified that certain themes drove user engagement, such as moral dilemmas, coming-of-age narratives, and rebellion.

Using these themes, Fandom could identify other pieces of intellectual property that exhibit these characteristics, such as Teen Wolf, Inside Out, or even Seinfeld, and promote Elder Scrolls to those audiences, according to Steinberg.

Being a fan of data

According to Bill Schild, the general manager of the brand suitability platform Channel Factory, Helix allows Fandom to capitalize on perhaps its greatest asset—its proprietary data.

“You’re only as good as the data you have, and Fandom has really robust data,” Schild said. “When you combine proprietary data with proprietary technology, you have a really differentiated product.” 

Leaning into its data to make connections, Fandom’s Helix could also attract advertisers from non-endemic categories, especially those with Gen-Z or gaming strategies, according to Steinberg. In particular, Fandom sees opportunity in working with clients in the consumer packaged goods and quick-service restaurant spaces.

For now, Helix is primarily focused on achieving upper and mid-funnel objectives, but as it evolves, the product suite will include lower-funnel and performance-based capabilities.

In its launch phase, which has seen Fandom work with 15 to 20 clients, Helix has generated improvements in awareness, consideration, and preference, as well as higher clickthrough rates, according to Steinberg.

“Helix allows us to walk up to a client, pull up a dashboard, show them what’s going on right now, and tell them how to think about their media strategy immediately,” Steinberg said. “We think it is a very powerful new product to bring to market.”